Is I dog, or is I kangaroo?
The New York Times profiles a real SVU unit in New Haven, and it’s as hard to read and draining as you might expect it to be, so decide what kind of day you’re having before you click:
Cuddy shared an office with her partner, Detective Joe Landisio, their two desks facing each other and pushed together, edge to edge. The room was crowded with two printers, a table, another small desk and a huge file cabinet filled with old homicide cases that no one had bothered to move when the units switched offices. The bathroom was next door, so you could hear toilets flushing all day. When she walked into the office, she felt like going straight to sleep. The mother had been so distraught, and Cuddy couldn’t make a dent in that. ‘‘You know what this office needs?’’ she asked as she sat down at her desk, letting out a huge sigh. ‘‘A bar.’’
This piece and accompanying video about a low bridge that constantly scrapes off the tops of ambitious trucks is a true delight (the WSJ commenters were incapable of actually reading it, hence all the suggestions to lower the roadbed WHICH IS IMPOSSIBLE BC OF FACTORS MENTIONED IN THE STORY):
Local rental companies alert drivers to it when they hand over truck keys, especially because insurance generally doesn’t cover the overhead damage. “We warn people all the time to avoid that area,” says a spokesman for Avis Budget Group Inc.’s area office.
Penske Corp. is “well aware of the issues with this low train trestle and the website,” says a spokesman for the company, whose rental trucks star in some of Mr. Henn’s videos.
Penske’s truck heights are visible from the driver’s seats, and the local office informs customers about the underpass. “If drivers are paying attention to their surroundings,” the spokesman says, “they should never hit it.”
Black Nerd Problems (which is a fabulous, fabulous site that makes me laugh uproariously/think deeply at least once a week) has a fab piece by Nicole Homer on looking for her origin story:
Rae Dawn Chong is forced to help Schwarzenegger after being harassed (had her phone call listened to, followed to her car, and being called a whore for not being responsive to sexual advances) by one of the men that kidnapped Commando’s daughter. And, obviously, that is the start to a great love story. It may seem minor, but that is the first time I saw any “family” that looked like mine in a movie. And, no, my dad wasn’t dropping hilarious one-liners or killing people (that I know of), but it was black(ish) and white love. And I was glad to get those scraps. Because other than that, I had white buffonery as backdrop every time a family like mine was on TV. Let’s be clear that I’m not losing any sleep or spilling any tears or blood over white representation in the media. We all already know that history (and by history, I mean other white people) have been kind to white people in the media.
Elisabeth French on confronting the doctor who missed her cancer:
He sits back in his chair and takes a deep breath. I point to the scans, reminding him how my story started, then I tell him how it ends. For one brief moment, his eyes betray him; he’s stunned silent. Then, a switch flips. He spouts vague legal terminology at me until I sign on dotted lines, agreeing that I won’t sue him—that I’m just there to talk. I spend the next hour shooting questions at him, rapid-fire: “Knowing what we know now, is there any evidence of chondrosarcoma in my previous scans?” “How else might my cancer have revealed itself: Blood work? Bone density tests? Further investigation of my family’s cancer history?”
I have every intention of asking him why, out of all the people he saved, he failed to save me. But that answer is finally clear: You can’t save someone you insist doesn’t need saving.
We sit in painful, protracted silence as I stare at his perfectly tanned, inscrutable face. I’m hoping he’ll say something, anything to make me feel better. He cocks his head to the side: “You seem angry…”
As you gaze at Sansa’s majestic largeness, let’s #TBT to exactly one month ago:
Jaya and I are Drynuary-ing together, complete with supportive backchannel emails, so I truly enjoyed this guide to being polite about Drynuary (I personally love all portmanteaus, for the record):
Do not compare this to actual addiction and recovery. I have no idea about actual statistics, but I’m sure there have been some people who have tried Drynuary, had a really hard time, and it made them realize maybe they had more of an alcohol dependence than they realize and they sought help. It’s good when people seek help for addiction. The rest of us will likely be returning to a lifestyle that involves consuming alcohol come February 1, so do not act like giving up alcohol for a month is akin to entering rehab or some huge trial.
The Hairpin re-shared my old piece about how you should end your bad relationship, and pointed out that it contains outdated Jon Hamm/Jennifer Westfeldt information, so now I think love is a lie and all is ashes in my mouth (HOLDING DOWN FOR NICK OFFERMAN AND MEGAN MULLALLY THO):
One year, two year relationships are not that much work, or, at least, they shouldn’t be. Thirty year marriages seem to be hard work, based on the grim expressions. Look, if you’re not stranded on a desert island with one other person, and you find that your relationship is a stressor in your life, just end it. You’ll find someone else, and, if you don’t, ever, at least you’re not in a terrible relationship. When you genuinely enjoy someone and feel like, to quote my best friend’s grandmother, they are a radiator and not a drain, it’s the place you go to to escape your terrible job, or your aggravating family. It’s supposed to be your home.
If I were writing that piece today, I would include that sometimes your relationship sucks because both of you are awesome, but not in ways that gel, btw.
Yes, it was very long and condescending and I didn’t like it:
Good morning, good morning, if you feel like sorting through some MRA shit this morning I’d highly recommend the #WastingHisTime2016 thing going around on the twittars right now and/or reading comment threads on coverage thereof
“Reading these tweets like advice” yaaaaaasssssssssss.
I am totally inept at Twitter, can you explain this to me? It’s a bunch of women joking about how to waste men’s time? And I’m guessing MRAs are up in arms (moreso than usual, even)?
This tweet sums it up nicely: https://twitter.com/offlinemena/status/6848626637…
They think we will collectively be sobbing on social media when we don’t get chocolates on 2/14, engaged on 12/31, and spend all of 2017 alone.
Weird, that’s me every year, minus the sobbing on social media.
Puppy was so smol
Now the same puppy so lorge
I love either way
yes. this. these are my feels.
There is a bridge in the Syracuse area that is pretty similar to the one in that WSJ story, and whenever a truck gets stuck, it makes from great fun on the evening news (less fun for people driving on the road, tho, since it’s on a not unbusy highway).
There’s one in Lansing MI, too. It takes off the top of a truck or two a year, in the middle of a main thoroughfare.
We’ve got a set of them in Boston on a road called Storrow Drive. A local news site records all the “Storrowings” that happen. Often it looks like the top of the truck was peeled off with a huge can opener. Since this is Boston, there’s a sharp up-tick around student move-in time.
Ha, yeah, UHub’s annual Storrowing Pool is one of my favorite local games.
There was a photo on Twitter this morning of a Storrowed truck, and it was an F.W. Webb truck, which, I’m sorry, should freaking know better.
Same thing happens with giant live oak trees down South. Always seem to take roof/sides off of poor ol’ huge tractor trailers who are just trying to deliver X. I saw one that looked like a sardine can, a dazed driver standing by the side, on the phone trying to explain to his home office: “So I scraped a tree… and the truck is TOTALLED”
Nature for the win.
“That 100+ year old tree just came out of NOWHERE!”
I don’t know why more towns don’t make signs like this:
Sounds like a dare to be honest.
Also sounds like the sort of dare I’d speed up before attempting
I’ve lived in a couple of factory towns with lots of rail underpasses and lots of tractor trailers. Trucks getting horribly stuck under a narrow rail underpass are a wonderful sight to see. Last one I saw took over 12 hours to get him out.
WSJ commenters, dude.
Heh heh heh.
Too smart to read the whole article, too smart to read the whole sign.
There is a very famous bridge (I mean, my dad knew about it) in my town where trucks can fit under it in one direction and not the other. And even though it is marked trucks should not go that way, my spouse and I have each spotted trucks inching slo-o-owly through the bridge, the wrong way.
I love that article so much because there’s a covered bridge where I grew up that got destroyed last year by a careless truck driver. The township had just spent a bunch of money restoring it the year before! Thanks to the truck it was closed for ages while the township waited for the replacement wood to be cured!
It’s not like I’m bitter or anything.
We have one in Santa Barbara as well. Last month I saw a guy with a 5th wheel (that’s what it’s called when a truck is pulling an RV, right?) stopped in front of it on the offramp, out of his truck looking up at the bridge and his RV, thinking he was going to make it but not taking into account all the equipment/vent type things on top that were definitely NOT going to make it! (Related link: http://www.edhat.com/site/tidbit.cfm?nid=98904)
Iowa City has a low train trestle bridge that catches tall vehicles. Iowa City also has a British-themed bar called the Wig & Pen. Back in the 80s and 90s W&P had an authentic imported red double-decker bus, and they would drive it around town on game days and at other times.
If you guys have never been to the 11foot8 Youtube channel you are MISSING OUT.
my kids are gonna love this
Bless you, Elyse.
These are fantastic and really weirdly satisfying
Why am I watching these? What is wrong with me? What is going on??
I want to include “how does this happen??” yet I feel it would totally be something that happened to me. Which is to say, that I did. I shall go marinate in multiple flavors of secretive shame/embarrassment/confusion now.
I love that the commenting policies include “it was condescending and we didn’t like it.” There’s a whole Internet out there for people to gunk up with their trash opinions. Leave this place be.
GUYS does this image look familiar? Turns out I’m cubicle-adjacent at my new job to the guy who created it!!! He has a whole line of Hamilton + other fan art! https://society6.com/danpecci
You have clearly landed in a fantastic work environment.
Yes! And colleagues are regularly walking through the office singing Hamiltunes! I have found my people!
WHERE DO YOU WORK? (If you don’t mind me asking. Or perhaps a general industry/region if you are wary of revealing that info on the www? You are living the dream, and I need to know how to get there.)
I work at a theater company! Living the dream, indeed (if your dream is to be around theatergeeks 24/7).
Thanks for sharing that link, these are fantastic items.
The leggings are legit!!
God bless that bridge, I live pretty near it and it is pretty much a local legend.
I work nearby a different bridge with a similar history— the Westwood Police have a youtube account just for videos of people crashing into the bridge.
But which one do I watch first, they all look beautiful…
*sees the one that’s titled Lobsterpocalypse*
SOLD
ETA: Oh sweet Jesus and then it catches fire and why isn’t the driver wearing shoes this is beautiful thank you thank you for bringing this into my life.
How does it even catch fire? I mean I know cars can catch on fire, but it’s the top of the truck, seemingly, so how would something flammable plus something else that starts the fire get on top there? Are the lobsters burning? WHAT SET THE LOBSTERS ABLAZE?
I assume it was the fuel supply to the cooling unit. Those lobsters gotta be cooled or they’re worthless at the destination. I don’t really know.
Agreed with Rose- the trucks that go around with small shipments of fish/shellfish around here all have refrigeration units in them (and, depending, some might even have air circulation thingies in the water to keep certain things alive, the way the tanks do in the store?), often near the top.
YES, that’s my favorite, and he stays in the truck SO LONG. GET OUT AND LOOK AT THE DAMAGE, don’t just SIT THERE.
The other best part of that one, for me, is how long it takes for crews to get there, he obviously didn’t call anyone until WAY later than he should have (or maybe just some random bystander did). Basically, the fire station is roughly 300 feet away from that bridge (the temporary one as they redo the normal one is EVEN CLOSER), so the police officer probably got there, called the fire crew, who then got there almost instantly.
What was he DOING in there that whole time? If he’d called right away they could have put the fire out before it spread onto the bridge.
I was sitting there, yelling at my computer, “Your truck is on fire. Get. Out. Of. The. Truck.” And he still didn’t get out. And when he did he forgot his shoes? I have no idea what is going through that man’s mind and I don’t care because the result is glorious.
And then a random shirtless and also shoeless guy shows up and wanders around looking at the fire for a bit. Apparently there is a shoe shortage in Westwood?
I guess all the shoes had to go towards kindling the lobster fire.
Oh wow. I didn’t actually read the piece when I was skimming the link roundup but I was like, “Oh yeah, like the one by Brightleaf.”
And then I saw your comment and went back to check and yep that is actually the one. I have seen so many trucks opened like sardine cans after trying to get under that bridge. My boyfriend and I drove past it literally two nights ago and were discussing how often that happens. Excellent.
Something about watching the tops of those trucks and buses get shaved off was deliciously satisfying.
Honestly a Durham landmark.
I am doing Drynuary too! I didn’t start until Sunday, since on Saturday the BF finally made me watch The Exorcist and I was not doing that sober. It’s been fine so far, I have a head cold and am not really enjoying life anyways so not having alcohol hasn’t been a big deal. So far. I still have to survive my office Christmas party this weekend, so.
I started on Monday due to there was no way I was going to be in a bridal fashion show sober.
I would like to hear this story.
It turned out to not be nearly as awful as I thought it would! I had to get up early, I had hair and makeup done by some ladies who were not quite clear on the ethnicity of their co-worker and ventured several guesses before she arrived but were otherwise very nice, I had a solid two hours between hair/makeup and getting dressed so I had a strange winter sangria thing that was fine until the bartender insisted on putting anisey bitters in it, I was the only model that managed a quick-change successfully, the other models were really nice–one of them is married to a transguy that I was in a show with last year, so we talked about his transition and how their relationship has had to adjust, another girl and I had a lovely misandry moment when one of the “grooms” made a crack about trying to twirl and dip us and she was like “…Try it.” and we cracked up at the idea of this 18-y/o trying to toss our 170-pound frames across a stage, it was overall a good time but I was Very Very Happy to have a beer or five afterward.
this is a GREAT story thank you for telling it! and I am glad all was well in the end.
UPDATE I just found a hairpin in my hair that’s been there since Sunday
I didn’t intend on doing Drynuary, but I haven’t had a drink since Saturday night and am really enjoying the break. So I’m gonna see how long I can go!
same here, although the kids went back to school this week and I dunno, I’m kinda looking forward to a margarita on Friday as my reward for dragging my ass out of bed all week…
Yeah same, I knew I needed a break after the holidays, so I haven’t had a drink since mimosas at brunch on New Years Day. Currently the plan is to go until my soccer game on Sunday and then see where I’m at, since soccer generally involves drinking afterwards.
Last year I did Dry February (is there a portmanteau for that?) so part of me will feel like a wimp if I don’t do all of January.
I’m also doing Drynuary. My friends are a bit skeptical. I think one, though, worries that whenever I take up a health thing, I’m judging her for not doing it too. Which I don’t.
I’m doing Drynuary for the first time too and all’s been smooth sailing except tonight I have a blind date with a stranger from the internet and I’ve no idea how one navigates that booze-free! Any and all tips welcome
hey, at least doing a dry month is a good conversation starter, assuming your reasons for doing it are stuff you’re ok with sharing with a new person. I think it’s super interesting to hear about why people do a month of [whatever] and what they get out of it.
I also just read Sarah Hepola’s Blackout and while I don’t drink like that anymore, parts of it were too familiar. My husband’s like “can’t you just have one beer when you go out with your friends?” And I’m like “you don’t get compulsive behaviour, do you?”
I just read that, too!
And for people without compulsive tendencies, no, they just do not Get. It.
Huh, I had no idea Drynuary was a thing when I decided to abstain four days ago. Alas, my commitment only extends to a week at a time (because I prefer setting smaller goals to help maximize success). But one week will hopefully lead to two, then three, etc.
Mr. B and I are also doing Drynuary. So far so good, but check back in later in the month, when my tune will likely change.
I’m doing sort of the opposite this year. I usually don’t drink very much, but I’m finishing up an extremely stressful year at work and kind of decided, “You know what I need? MORE COCKTAILS”.
I’m trying to figure out how to drink more because I have this unfortunate habit of a) going wine-tasting with my father a few times a year, b) buying tasty wine but generally not of the type that should be cellared for years before you even think about opening it, and c) then never drinking it because I hardly drink and usually by the time it’s time for dinner I’m too tired for more than a small glass and then my fiancé and I would have to commit to drinking again the next night so we don’t waste most of the bottle.
I have a very strong image of the type of drivers in the WSJ article.
Definitely male.
Probably never driven a truck before, but when the rental place asked if he had he said ‘of course!’
When warned of the bridge he didn’t bother listening because ‘I don’t need to be told how to drive a truck’
When approaching said bridge he saw the ‘low bridge signs’ and thought ‘it’ll fit.’
It did not fit.
I love the idea that drivers use ‘I didn’t know the height of my vehicle’ as an excuse; don’t you have to get a licence to drive a truck? and isn’t part of getting that licence knowing that the height of your vehicle is really important? (I’ve not driven a lorry, but I have driven tractors and been in the cab of many lorries, and almost everyone has the vehicle height printed on the windscreen.)
I was having a discussion about this with my horse-lorry-driving friends recently as someone was worried about a bridge she had to go under to get to a dressage competition, and I was really surprised at how few (as in: none) of them knew how tall their lorry was!
But isn’t it a fundamental of lorry driving? Even as a car driver I notice the ‘low bridge’ signs.
I can understand a little bit in the States because their roads are built for large vehicles (even the cars are huge!), i.e. wide and straight; but in Europe there’s no excuse, some of the roads I’ve seen lorries have to go down are straight up terrifying. Even the road from the motorway to my local show venue back home was a nightmare, barely wide enough for two cars to pass, on a hill, with blind bends; and every weekend lorries and horse boxes were up and down it all day in hoards.
That was why I was so surprised! My friend posted on FB about ‘I have just realised I don’t know how tall my lorry is after looking at routes to get to place X so I’ve gone and found out’ and everyone who commented was with variations of ‘neither do I, it’ll be fine’.
I have this somewhat smug memory (that was super stressful at the time) of an ex who’d convinced me to move across the country with him shaming me for saying I wasn’t comfortable driving a U-Haul and insisting I’d have to…and then breaking part of the U-Haul (the thing that hooks it up to your vehicle) within 5 minutes of leaving the rental place because he didn’t know how to park it on our street that was on an incline. We had to call in my brother to drive it for us.
There’s a value to knowing your limits and I’m gonna keep insisting I know mine in the face of arrogance #lessons
once in college I had to drive an equipment truck for the marching band and I was TERRIFIED over my decision not to stop at the scales on the highway. Despite it being a large enough truck that other trucks on the highway were flashing lights at me in various trucker-lingo scenarios that it took me a few hours to figure out.
After that trip I felt like a truck driving pro, but I’m still haunted by the feeling that someday a random cop is going to pull me over and give me a ticket for not stopping at the scales.
I think those are only for trucks full of merchandise or manufacturing supplies. 🙂
You and I must have the same ex! I just posted a story about mine insisting on driving a rental truck and breaking it too!
I helped my ex move (before he was my ex) after college and he was all ready to rent a Uhaul trailer and hook it to my car. I was not looking forward to this and it made my day when my dad confirmed I was right and my car couldn’t tow that thing. (Of course then I borrowed my parents’ van and used that and he didn’t pay for any gas, even though it was his damn move.)
Yes to all this. I had an ex who “helped” me move by insisting he would drive the rental truck because he’s a gentleman. When I said “actually I learned how to drive in giant trucks because that’s all my family had that was an automatic transmission so I feel I have the better skill-set…” he cut me off and literally took the truck keys out of my hand and wouldn’t give them back. So I let the smug asshole drive the truck and wouldn’t you know it, he was a foot in the passenger lane the whole trip (i was following in my car) and eventually knocked the passenger side mirror off on a telephone pole. If this was the age of cell phones I would have recorded that crap to prove he was a bad driver because it would comfort me that I did not, in fact, lack judgement and was not being “needy and dramatic about it.” This was over 11 years ago and I’m still mad about it. This event led directly to my feminist awakening and our breakup a couple of weeks later.
UGH MEN.
I have an ex who doesn’t have a driving licence and has probably never driven a car (he says he has, but since he’s never had a licence I doubt it was more than crawling around a car park.) who still insists on telling me how to drive.
I saw him over Christmas and was laughing about my mums new car (it was a boy racer car, so has 6 gears, but is now too old to do much over 100km/h) and he went on a mansplainy tangent about how the car shouldn’t have 6 gears yadda yadda. I’ve taken to listening for about 5 seconds and then reminding him that he doesn’t drive so STFU.
My theory is that the bridge-hitters fall into two categories: people who aren’t used to driving tall trucks or other vehicles (RVs, for example) and don’t know that they need to know the height of their vehicle for precisely that reason; most moving truck renters probably fall into that category. The other one would be commercial truck drivers who are inexperienced enough so that even though learning about the maps and apps that can help them avoid these lower overpasses (and which have been available since time immemorial) probably was part of their education, they either haven’t had enough experience to know that, yes, these low overpasses really are a potential problem, or they’re trying to save money and don’t get them and think that they can get by without them.
I had to drive a U-haul a couple of months ago; I don’t regularly drive any type of vehicle and of course I swiped it into a parked car two blocks after I left my apartment. Because what’s more fun than moving on a tight schedule? Having to talk to the police at the same time!
I was surprised how fast many of the drivers were going when they hit it; so yes they probably weren’t experienced enough to know that hitting that bridge was a possibility!
The best/worst thing about the bridge story is just how much you have to think to yourself “I am no better than these people. I am not too smart to drive a truck into a bridge” while you read.
I did a Sober October last year and people asked if I chose October just for the rhyme. Pfft, no, if I’d really been intentional about choosing a month, I woulda done Blissfully Short Sober February. (High-five for no pregnancy comments, even though Sober October had zero impact on the beer belly.)
Excuse me. I am definitely too smart to drive a truck into a bridge.
I did however once drive a tractor through a wall that was right in front of me.
I drove into a cow. It was a black cow, on the highway, at midnight, and I only glanced it, but I definitely ran into a cow.
I once followed a herd of cows into a field, thinking they’d know the way to our holiday cottage.
Spoiler: they didn’t, they were going into a field.
At least I didn’t hit any of them?
I mean, in my defense, I had no idea that it was a cow until after, and it was running down the highway towards me. And I certainly did not follow it anywhere, I knew better than that, mostly because I like to think it was like this kit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ija1SOkWWqU
I am definitely too smart to drive a truck into a bridge, although I did once realize I was driving a too-tall UHaul at a too-short bridge and drove off the road at the last minute. But, I didn’t physically hit the bridge, therefore, I am too smart to drive a truck into a bridge.
Also, I don’t really recommend either of those things.
yep the only time I’ve really damaged another vehicle was when I was driving not just a rental truck, but a rental truck towing a trailer. I maintain that it was less my fault than the notoriously awful truck company’s, though. (“We don’t have the medium-sized truck you reserved, but this small truck towing a wildly swinging box behind it is just as good for your urban move, right?”)
That is pretty much the only kind of wall you can drive through, to be fair–that, and the one directly behind you!
I tried that explanation on my boss (who owned the wall I drove through with hay spikes on the front loader). It didn’t work.
I once drove a Honda Accord into a lawnmower that was parked in a garage. The only thing that makes me too smart to drive a truck into a bridge is my refusal to drive anything bigger than a mid-sized SUV.
Me too. I avoid anything large vehicles cause I am definitely the person spending way too long awkwardly backing out of that parking spot and likely being judged by strangers. And that’s in my smallish car.
I once left the gate open on a truck full of produce and spilled several bushels of corn into a busy intersection.
I see “12 ft clearance” signs in my shitty suv, and there’s part of me that panics that I’m too big to fit. I would fret my rental truck all the way into a collision with that bridge, no questions asked.
I have never personally almost driven a charter bus under a too small bridge… but every time I have watched a bus driver trying to drive to a location on the itinerary I created, hesitate before a too small bridge, play chicken with the too small bridge, confirm with me that it is okay that we are at least an hour late to our destination, and then lugubriously make a u-turn in a charter bus, the bus driver likes to let me know that the whole brouhaha was definitely my fault.
Oh, yeah. Was running late to meet with friends and barreled into a parking garage, totally forgetting the cargo box was still mounted on the car from vacation. Didn’t even occur to me that I was the source of that cataclysmic scraping sound until pedestrians started to stop and stare. Worse was that I still had to get back out of the garage so had to repeat the whole nightmare. So yes, I am def one of Those People!
Driving a borrowed SUV with a homemade rack on top. No clue about height, but very aware of it. Made my sister roll down the passenger window and sit on the sill, legs in, torso out, with her eyes at roof height. Then I inched the SUV (with a clutch, there’s some skill required for inching) into the parking garage. Sis reported the rack cleared the garage opening by less than 2 inches. Had to inch the entire length of the the SUV inside, as the homemade roof rack was the entire length of the SUV and we did not trust it to be uniform.
Once parked, we realized we were both soaked with sweat. On a not-very-hot day.
Had to do it all again when we left the garage.
My favorite part of the story is when they talk to the person at the truck rental place who is like “We SPECIFICALLY TELL THEM not to take that route”
I called it Octsober when I did it.
I… would have picked it for the rhyme. I find most rhymes pretty convincing, actually.
Charlie Potato Hashbrowns is actually chewing something he’s supposed to chew, gods above be praised.
It has been a tough few days in the potato zone. Everyone else moved out of my house so now there’s no one to watch Charlie during the day, which means he spends it hanging out by himself in his puppy pen and that means he’s TOTALLY WIRED by the time I get home every evening and I’m totally exhausted. This is not a good combination and mostly means a lot of me lying on my bed going “I’m the worst puppy mother ever just kill me”.
POTATO ZONE
Puppies sleep a lot, so he probably isn’t even noticing that he’s alone during the day. (Grown dogs sleep a lot too, for what it’s worth.) He needs ‘extra playtime’ because he was used to getting it elsewhere.
You’re a good puppy mother! he looks like a very good boy who is very snuggly.
Got a reasonably priced and responsible doggy daycare nearby? LIFESAVERS!
You’re doing just fine! C.P. Hashbrowns is just fine!
Puppy daycare saved the lives and sanity of the aussie shepard/border collie X’s humans. She was mostly chill but also required 3 hours of exercise and socialisation a day. (Now she is a totally chill 14.5yr old)
Do you have any neighbors who are 8-year-olds? I bet they would totally play with your dog afterschool if there were a way to make that work.
There is a bridge on the Mount Vernon highway, built before buses were so tall, that has prominent signs posted about the bridge height and clearance, and YET at least once a year a bus driver (all men so far) crashes into it and sheers off the top of his bus.
The bridge is undamaged, so far, which makes me proud of the CCC’s engineering and workmanship.
Not so proud of modern male bus drivers who don’t pay attention. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49…
JHC, that Elle piece was masterful. My sister went undiagnosed with lymphoma for seven months in her early 20s – “It’s just night sweats!” they said, after she spent months soaking her duvet; my dad (whose primary advocate in medical situations is my hawk-like mom) just had brain surgery because the doctors didn’t do a full-body scan after completing melanoma treatment.
So yeah: ANGRY. And also taking it personally! Fuck you, cancer! And fuck you too, doctors who insist women don’t have medical problems!
From the article:
“The first article I read was a case against Kaiser Permanente where Anna Rahm was awarded $28 million dollars. She’d complained of severe back pain, and instead of an MRI, her doctors sent the five-foot-four, 125-pound 17-year-old to a nutritionist to lose her “belly weight.” Her tumor went undetected for months, and Anna’s right leg, half her pelvis, and part of her spine were amputated.”
RAAAHRRRRRRR >:-(
Holy shit
That is the kind of case that blows the top off of your head. She was 5’4″ and 125 pounds! What is that, a size 4? Which is not at all to say that anyone any heavier wouldn’t also have deserved better treatment, but JUST HOW THIN DO YOU HAVE TO BE BEFORE THE DOCTOR WILL TAKE YOUR PAIN SERIOUSLY???
Skeletal, tbh.
People can carry weight very differently. I know that at 5’6″ and 125 I was chubby, so I can definitely see a doctor looking at a 17 year old girl her size and deciding that she’s just fat so clearly any medical issues are caused by her fatness.
I think you may have thought of yourself as chubby. You can’t have been, not by any standard even vaguely based in human health. The BMI is a very flawed measure, but that’s a BMI of like 20, which is significantly closer to underweight than over-.
Let us opt to not continue this line of conversation, for the benefit of all concerned.
Oh dear, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to take it to a bad place! I should have just left it at the first sentence.
True! I should have remembered to denote sarcasm.
Relevant. http://www.cracked.com/article_23304_6-weird-ways…
My anger at the medical profession continues to grow and I rarely see a reason for it to stop.
“Furthermore, according to research by a Canadian organ transplant organization, 36 percent of wives who were eligible to donate organs to their husbands went ahead with the operation, whereas only 6.5 percent of eligible husbands were willing to give their wives one of their precious organs.”
HEY WHAT
I know right.
its almost as if women are conditioned to sacrifice everything, even their own health, to make sure other people are happy and healthy.
I can’t imagine why these numbers are so low, either of them. Seriously, how could you stay married to someone you wouldn’t give a kidney to, or who wouldn’t give one to you?
I was also shocked by that. There are probably a lot of factors to do with risk, and chance of recovery with a new organ, and childcare and things that I can’t think of not having been in the situation, though. None of which excuses the gender gap.
Ah, thanks for the link, this is such a good article! I work for a website that gives health info to people with hard-to-diagnose chronic conditions and I really wish I could share it in a professional capacity, but I don’t think the vibrator pic and term “dick cancer” would fly with my employer, unfortunately.
You’ll never know if you don’t try 😉
I’m actually really into Cracked for this reason though, its the kind of thing people who wouldn’t normally think about these things might actually read! Everyone can relate to dick cancer!
This INSISTENCE that a woman who complains of pain must be crazy or whiny or just weak is so maddening. And kills people.
The failure to diagnose endometriosis is particularly infuriating to me. Here’s a fairly common, very painful illness that it takes an average of TEN YEARS to diagnose because doctors (often men, but not always) keep insisting that that level of agony is just a normal part of being a woman.
If a few advil don’t get rid of your cramps and it’s like that every month, if you’re missing work/school every month because of cramps, that’s NOT NORMAL.
My heart still starts racing when I remember the doctor at the Student Health Center my freshman year who said “Well, you shouldn’t NEED anything stronger than ibuprofen to make it to class.” NO SHIT THAT’S WHY I’M HERE, BECAUSE SOMETHING IN MY BODY IS WRONG AND NOT WORKING THE WAY IT SHOULD.
(fibro, not endo.)
Wait, really????
I don’t miss work every month (ANYMORE) but i really wish I could because even if I’m not actively in pain after 2 extra-strength naproxen and 2 tylenol migraine, I still have all those weird side-effects of severe pain.
I guess I should make an appt with a gynecologist sooner than later. (My last one, who I knew since I was 13 – 18 years now! – moved across the country last summer, but i hadn’t really discussed the pain with her, under the assumption that I just have to suck it up.)
My mother complained FOR DECADES that she felt abnormally tired and lethargic but because she was over 40, every doctor said she was just getting old and heading for menopause. They made her feel bad, and she stopped mentioning it. My parents moved, so she went to a new doctor and she decided to furtively mention it again. The doctor checked her out, and her thyroid functioning was completely out of whack. I might have given the other doctors a pass for not checking, if only she hadn’t been on thyroid medication without the level being checked SINCE HER EARLY THIRTIES. It makes me feel so angry I don’t know what to do with myself. Her level got readjusted, and now she’s completely fine.
This is my mother’s story as well. Diagnosed with ~50% kidney function at 23, only to have it entirely ignored by her next GP who chalked up her weight gain to “getting older”, gave her an inhaler when she complained it felt like she couldn’t breathe, and responded “why would it?” when she asked if her symptoms had anything to do with her kidneys. It wasn’t until she worked herself almost to a stroke by 40 that her boss sent her to a doctor (who largely specialized in geriatric patients) who said YES ALL OF YOUR PROBLEMS HAVE TO DO WITH YOUR KIDNEYS.
Yes. Exactly. I, a complete layperson, had to INSIST that my ex be seen by other doctors because I knew what she was going through was endo & it could be treated. But it took years. After she’d already suffered far too many with it.
(this is why part of me wishes I’d been able to stomach medical school, so I could be a small mote of help out there for women.)
This makes me really glad for Mr. Chemicaldefect. When I was having horrible miscarriage contractions, he was the one to say “you look like you are hurting a lot, why don’t I go get some painkillers” while I was trying to be like its not that bad? And he said well it looks bad and spoiler, it was really bad. But I felt like I shouldn’t be wimpy, you know? And he was just like, no, you should not be in pain.
I’ve had three family members die due to medical incompetence, two of them women. One was told that her pain was all in her head until the cancer causing the pain was beyond treatment, the other’s doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her until they went back to her x-rays and noticed a malignant tumor in her lung that they’d FORGOTTEN ABOUT.
I don’t have any experience with Endo, but I did read that doctors tend to tell young women who present with the symptoms that they’re too young to have endo because it usually doesn’t present until mid 20s-30s.
HOWEVER, what’s actually going on is that most women aren’t diagnosed until their mid-20s-30s, but they’ve been suffering since puberty. It just takes that long to get doctors to believe the symptoms are real.
FUCKING RAGE.
I have multiple stories from my family where doctors said there wasn’t a problem for so long that when someone did finally take the complaints seriously it was then a HUGE problem with long lasting consequences (cancer and chemo in one case and the removal of a dead kidney in another).
What I find frustrating is that doctors often say (to me personally or to family member), ‘don’t try and self diagnose’ , but in my experience sometimes that extra knowledge of what might be causing the problems (and sometimes what language to use to describe it) is what tends to get results.
I was fired by the first endocrinologist that I saw as an adult because, when she kept lowering my thyroid medication and I kept feeling worse and worse and I went back to her and her solution was to lower it AGAIN, I said no and that I was pretty sure what was wrong is that it needed to go back up. She said I was wrong and foolish to be reading all the literature I had read (internet was new then) and refused to see me any more.
So i went to a different doctor who listened to me, raised my levels back up, and all the symptoms went away and I’ve been fine ever since.
I still hate that woman.
The sheer arrogance of the doctor who missed it saying “You seem angry…” FUCK YES SHE’S ANGRY HOLY SHIT. >:(
Also relevant:
How Doctors Take Women’s Pain Less Seriously
Is Medicine’s Gender Bias Killing Young Women?
Wasn’t the first one posted in the Link Roundup awhile ago? I remember because it infuriated me that a man had to write it for people to take it seriously; and he’s playing the ‘omg I now believe sexism is real because I witnessed it one time’ but his wife has probably been telling him about this shit for years and how badly she was treated by doctors. If his wife had written that article (like hundreds of women already have) everyone would have just said she was complaining and the doctors were following procedure or some bullshit.
I know this doesn’t really make up for anything, but both my mom and my grandmom discounted their husband’s pain (it’s nothing, you big baby) and later found out they had appendicitis.
(Discounting another person’s pain is never a good thing, but I know my grandmother routinely suffered through an incredible amount of pain due to reproductive-organ-related issues until she finally got a hysterectomy, so it’s not so much of a surprise that she did the same thing to her husband that doctors had done to her.)
Hi! It me, the lurker. (It also probably some of you.)
I am posting here because I am pretty sure that some of this amazing brain trust will remember a thing:
Do you recall a million years ago (internet time) when The Medium was around, there was a piece that recast Pulp Fiction as members of Winnie the Pooh? Some amazing lines were, “Does Christopher Robin LOOK like a Heffalump? Then why you tryin to TRAP him like one?”
I have been unable to find this ever again. It’s been perhaps 16 years. Does it still exist?
Much respect to you all,
Acha
No, but John Finnemore does a sketch on his Souvenir Programme that has the Pooh characters staging an intervention for Tigger, who’s a ‘roided-up mess.
This transportation planner approves any and all bridge-related stories. I am eating this right up.
Re the article about the missed cancer: is there anyone here who is a health professional, especially one that has worked in busy, hectic hospitals and practices? Cos I really want to hear your take on this. Why do so many people (mostly women, but not always) have the same stories of healthcare providers getting angry with patients who are vocal about their pain, to the point of refusing them treatment (see the story about the woman who was told ‘We’ll treat you when you stop screaming’)? Are there many patients who are incredibly challenging and confrontational, and do those patients colour the healthcare workers’ perception of all patients who are upset? Or are there some healthcare workers who just treat patients badly and are they an ongoing problem in the industry? Is it a symptom of burnout?
I’m so curious to hear what someone who has experience has to say about this phenomenom, because anecdotally it has always existed, it’s just that it’s getting more attention now, especially the gendered aspect.
Not a medical professional, I know from other experience that when ‘people’ are your job (any kind of retail, customer service etc), especially members of the public, you tend to stop seeing them as actual individual people after awhile; so I imagine that plays into a bit for doctors, especially after you throw in burnout, over-working, and the life-and-death stress.
I have many other ideas, but I’m hoping some actual medical professional can weigh in because it is a really interesting conversation that needs to be had.
Also relevant: http://www.cracked.com/article_23304_6-weird-ways…
“you tend to stop seeing them as actual individual people after awhile”
YES, I remember this from working in retail and waiting tables. It took an absurdly short amount of time for me to just default to irrationally hating *all* customers just for existing. Granted, I was hilariously unsuited to either job, so it might not be an exact parallel with someone who seeks out a career in ‘people’, but it’s certainly relevant.
I think I read an article where a doctor talked about this too (it may have been Cracked.).
Service was never a career choice for me, I did it through college and hated every minute and every person I had to deal with. But I also used to work with horses, which is my passion and I loved it, but even then I would get burned out, and even though I loved the animals, I would really start to hate having to deal with them; I would have 5, 10 or 15 horses to deal with, each one had its own set of stuff I had to do, plus that particular horses individual quirks that would make my job harder, then there would be that one asshole who I just hated and wanted to be done with, and you know at least one of them would decide to have a bad day and take an extra hour to work out or be difficult to catch and then I would just be fucking done and usually start crying. On top of all of that there were farm chores and other jobs to be fit in around the critical work of the horses.
The point of all of that is not that I think that job was anything comparable to being a doctor; but it does make me able to see how someone can end up exhausted and burned out from dealing with the same thing over and over (the same patient, or ‘kind’ of patient coming in everyday) and I can imagine how that could make you fall back on stereotypes or assumption making, unless you were very conscious of it and making deliberate efforts to avoid it.
I know its different in the US; but I definitely think that NHS doctors, like teachers, are piled with far too much non-critical bureaucratic crap that take away from doing their actual jobs of treating people. i.e 4 hour ER turn around times are a stupid benchmark that should be scrapped, and I can’t imagine the extra stress it places on doctors to not only treat a critical emergency patient but also be conscious that there’s 10 other patients to see in the next hour or their going to get a kicking over a stupid ‘target’
Just piping in to say U.S. capitalist system had pretty much the same drawback. Most doctors work for big companies and in the interest of max profit they have a limited amount of time with each patient. I DON’T know if E.R. docs have 4 minute limits, though.
…and I see now that you said 4 hour turnaround. Yes, that is crazy!
We have a problem with people waiting for hours in A&E with pout being seen, so the 4-hour wait limit was introduced.
So this is a thing I talk about when I’m running training courses: targets which aim to change behaviour have a half-life. When it was first introduced, people focuses on the problem, and wait times reduce, hooray! But after a while, the easy changes have been made, and there’s no money or resources to make the big changes needed. So then the target starts to become a problem: people start changing things to meet the target, rather than to address the underlying issues the target was introduced to solve. So now we have A&E departments where patients get removed to Decision Making Wards if they are in danger of breaching the 4-hour target. The target is now useless, because the patient still hasn’t been treated, but at least the hospital isn’t going to get fined for missing the target.
From what I’ve read; one of the current issues with the 4 hour target is that there isn’t much triaging of paitents, its just a blanket target; so you have the person who decided to go to A&E with the cold they’ve had for a week because it was easier than getting a GP appointment* and the person with stabbing abdominal pain who in theory both have to been seen within 4 hours and both have to have a full work up ‘just in case’ (they sue); whereas any intelligent person would stick a nurse in the waiting room who could fast track the stabbing abdominal pain to a doctor and give cold guy a tissue and tell him to fuck off home.
*I really really really hate the ‘customer service’ model the NHS is moving toward and GPs are so over stretched without the necessary resources that I can understand why people think that going to A&E is a valid alternative to waiting a few days for an appointment (EVEN THOUGH IT IS NOT.), but there should be someone in the A&E with the authority to send the idiots home so that Emergency Doctors can focus on actual Emergencies. See also community care for elderly and disabled patients, they end up in A&E because the care they actually need has been completely stripped and there is no alternative.
Grrr Tories and their deliberate defunding of the NHS so that they can justify privatization (‘It clearly doesn’t work, because we’ve run it badly on purpose, so we better sell it to the company that our school friends run now.’). The NHS is amazing and wonderful and it should be given all the money and all the respect.
I am a midwife in a very busy, very hectic, severely under-resourced practice. The majority of my patients belong to a cultural group that is stereotyped for over-complaining of pain. I see so, so, so, so, so many people who come to GYN visits with reports of pelvic pain, abdominal pain, generalized pain, insomnia, mood changes, libido changes, menstrual problems – and it’s just one after the other, all afternoon long. Especially when I’m pressed for time, doing all my work in Spanish (I’m fluent, but I learned as an adult and I know that takes a toll on my brain processing speed), it’s so easy to think “There is nothing wrong with this person. All she needs is someone to listen to her litany of symptoms.”
But! Then I think two things, in rapid succession:
1. If all she needs is someone to listen to her, then I am that person, and I am right now getting paid to listen to her, and this is the service I can provide, this is what I can do to heal her. I had better do a good job.
AND 2. What if there is something wrong with her?
Therefore I always do at least a very basic work-up for pretty much everyone, including imaging (usually ultrasound) and the most common blood/urine tests. I always set up a follow-up appointment with me (this is not standard in my practice, usually appointments are just made with whoever is free the soonest) and take plenty of time to talk through all the results.
I’m not trying to say I’m the greatest or anything. I literally have to remind myself to do my literal job, a dozen times a day. I have to talk myself into doing for my patients what I would obviously want done for myself or my kid or my loved ones. It’s exhausting and emotionally draining. I’m quite sure that one day I will slip up, let something slide, consider someone a malingerer and then that will be the end of it, I’ll miss something terribly important.
tl;dr tho, I think it’s usually burn-out for most people, with the occasional “I’m too smart to miss actual CANCER” thrown in there.
(PS hello I delurked! I’ve been telling myself all week that the first chance I had to contribute to a conversation, I’d delurk and now I’ve done it! Hi!)
bless you!
I just want to say I appreciate how hard you work to counter the pitfalls of your job. Not all jobs have such high stakes but I think most of them have ways where it is easy to just stop caring, and hurt people in the process, and I wish everyone thought hard about what bad habits they’re likely to fall into and put conscious effort into not letting it happen to them.
You’re a good person, is what I’m saying, and I hope you influence many, many people in your life.
Hi, glad you delurked! Your experience is probably not unusual. I would agree that it’s usually burn-out. So maybe the challenge is for us/people who want to change things is to make sure that it’s the “I’m too smart to miss actual CANCER” types who are targeted and chastised, and not to pile on the frontline staff who are not badly-intentioned, just overworked and exhausted and liable to make mistakes.
And well done you for taking the time to deal with your patients so compassionately. I hope you have lots of outlets for self-care in your life, you both need and deserve it!
Not a medical professional, though I work at a hospital and am surrounded by them. My impression is that doctors are under a lot of pressure to bill a certain amount of hours, but you know, there are only so many hours in the week, and it’s hard when patients come late or don’t show at all, or you have other admin/academic duties (teaching hospital). Also, they are very very conscious of patient rating scales and that many hospital administrations place a lot of weight on them (for example, my hospital sends surveys after every visit, like the mail version of when they ask you to stay on the phone for a short questionnaire after a customer service call, and these are very carefully considered by both hospital governing bodies and even national/bigger governing bodies like the Joint Commission, who certify that hospitals are up to the highest standards re: pretty much everything.)
Again, I am but a lowly admin, so take all of that with a grain of salt. I tell people all the time to ask your doctor questions if you have them, and that it’s okay to find a new doctor if you don’t like yours. I know it’s a pain, with insurance and distance and time dictating most of those choices, but if your doctor doesn’t listen to you, get a new one. It took me awhile, but I’m slowly learning that the doctor-patient relationship is a two-way street. (A couple of years ago, got rid of a dentist that condescended to me and treated me like a wayward child, and it was really…empowering sounds very dramatic, but.)
Editing to add that of course all of the above doesn’t absolve the sexism and sometime-awfulness that comes with healthcare. Obviously.
Interesting about the feedback surveys. Like in universities, they seem to often backfire and have the opposite effect to what’s intended.
Yes! On one hand, it’s a good thing to have some feedback. On the other hand, some people complain about things that are beyond anyone’s control, but that negative reaction only gets captured as BAD BAD BAD.
A Feedback Card Everywhere That Has Ever Offered Feedback Cards:
Score: 1 out of 10
Comments: It was rainy, and Mercury was in retrograde.
The Pawnee citizens? Those are real people.
“I found a sandwich in one of your parks, and I want to know why it didn’t have mayonnaise!”
I used to attend tons of public meetings in a previous job, and all of those Parks and Rec people were 100% accurate.
Even the hail Zorp people? 🙂
Especially them!
Our public meetings involve a probably inappropriate amount of Jesus and too little Zorp.
I used to work at a place that had 1-5 as possible levels of satisfaction customers could feel when they took their surveys. Corporate only counted 5’s as acceptable, however, so if you got all 4’s, it counted exactly the same as if you’d gotten all 1’s. It was very depressing.
I think the key is “some” feedback. I don’t mind giving feedback, say, once a year to check up on how my doctor is doing, but I get questionnaires every goddamn time I see someone–and since I’m in a HMO, that means when I see the PCP who decides who to refer me to, plus the referral, plus any other tester they may decide to send me to … for crying out loud, do they think I have nothing better to do than answer questionnaires?
I very rarely do the questionnaires, and I work for the hospital where I get my healthcare. Hahahahahahah oops.
My grandmother has worked as a pathologist for over 50 years (83 and still in the lab!). Early-ish in her career, she worked in the morgue. She frequently tells the story that, they used to call burn victims “crispy critters” because of how bodies curl up when you’ve been burned to death. One day, my grandfather went in to visit her as a surprise and was HORRIFIED seeing these bodies, and on top of it, had a really difficult time understanding how she could be so dispassionate in the office. She never would have wanted him to see it, because he wasn’t acclimatized. And coming up with cutesy nicknames that you would NEVER use in front of a patient was part of how you have to disassociate and do your job. You can’t think about the hopes and dreams and soul of a person when you’re giving them a death sentence or thinking about the dead body in front of you. And it isn’t that she’s without compassion, and if fact, she’s one of the most empathetic people I’ve ever known. But you just have to do your job to help them, and some forms of helping can’t use the same techniques as a social worker. It’s just too much for a human to bear the weight of everyone’s worst day of their life, and it takes a special kind of person who goes into that in the first place.
Not a healthcare professional, but I run training with doctors so hear their perspectives a lot.
I’ve heard patients say, “Waiting nearly four hours, and the doctor goes off for his lunch break. Lunch break! Imagine taking a lunch break when someone is waiting for you in agony!” The thing is, people being in front of you in agony is a normal day for a doctor, for 12 hours a day, and if you don’t take a break in spite of people being in agony and needing you, you never get to take a break and you don’t function effectively.
Learning to manage your normal empathetic reaction to people in pain and distress in front of you is a huge part of being a healthcare professional, because you have to step back, say no, take breaks, leave at the end of your shift (approximately) and so on, despite there still being a “need” for you. The more pressure you’re under, and the more broken the system around you is, the more you have to do that. Managing that balance of empathetic-and- engaged-enough to be effective but not-so-empathetic-and-engaged-enough that you’re ineffective is an enormous cognitive load, and it amazes that me so many doctors do it so well, especially in a incredibly over-worked system, rather than that some fail.
On top of that, I absolutely think that doctors are subject to the same stereotypes and confirmation bias as the rest of us, and sometimes worse (because the types of critical thinking about gender and race that are common in a few sectors just aren’t on most doctors’ radars AT ALL, including, in my experience, doctors of colour and overseas-trained doctors, not least because they are often in the more disempowered positions / on worse contracts as professionals too, and have even less opportunity than white and/or UK-educated doctors to reflect on how those things might impact their practice.) So it doesn’t surprise me that when the system fails, and when individuals fail, the weight of that falls more heavily on people whom the wider system considers lower-status, less reliable and so on.
I mean, some doctors are obviously assholes. But I think there are a lot of problems created by the ridiculous, non-contractual demands placed on doctors, and it’s inevitable that that gets passed onto patients in ways that reflect the race/gender/health hierarchies of wider society.
My mother hasn’t left the GP practice she manages in part because she genuinely feels that some of the GPs are teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown and a new Practice Manager would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. This is possibly an exaggeration, but the amount of pressure doctors are under (constantly being made worse by the government’s terrible decisions) is really not good.
:-/ This is what’s going on all over the place, I think – the system is incredibly broken, and amazing people are taking the burden of brokenness on themselves to avoid even more of it falling on their patients and their colleagues. It makes me so angry and frustrated. I hope your mum is in an empowered place and isn’t doing anything that will hurt her in the long-term!
(The government’s complete and utter disregard for professionals is one of the things that really gets my goat, whether it’s teachers, doctors, librarians, AHPs, lawyers or what. They are a bunch of bloody posh boys with no professional training, expertise or identity, and zero respect for the accomplishments of those who have. I don’t think Labour ought to be the party of the professional middle-classes, but I do think that having a party of lawyers, teachers and doctors – people who’ve actually bloody done something – shows in stark contrast to the party of landed gentry and their arses.)
On the plus side, when she last seriously talked about leaving they gave her a massive payrise (I mean, still less than my boyfriend, four and a half years out of university, earns; the difference in rates of pay between typically-female and typically-male jobs makes me so angry), which helps. Sadly, she is still very stressed most of the time (running a busy GP surgery is hard! Who knew?).
Excellent points. From hearing the other side, I’m always glad to hear of a doctor taking their breaks when they’re supposed to and not having to work a 36-hour shift without sleep.
Also good point about the lack of exposure to critical thinking about gender and race, and about a lot of things. The general devaluing of humanities and lionising of STEM in higher education is going to lead to problems like this in a wide range of professions (nothing wrong with STEM! but if it’s not balanced with the critical thinking skills learned from humanities, either formally or informally, it can go to bad places.)
Yes! My friend is currently in medical school, but she started with a theatre degree (and is actually a fantastic director, but that’s neither here nor there.) She has a lot of feelings about including arts in medicine, and luckily, the tide seems to be turning towards “yes, arts in medicine, creative people thinking of solutions to complex problems, people who know how to talk to people, yes, more of those!” My hospital recently added an “Arts in Medicine” department. So hopefully we’re moving forward and this isn’t just a trend!
I wanted to say that I too have a friend who got a theater degree and has now become a doctor! They were very clear that, while he needed to complete some courses before he came to Med School they loved having people come to medicine from non-biology/chemistry backgrounds. Especially as the school he went to has a mission of promoting social justice and service over compensation.
My husband is an ER nurse and he says it feels like a constant battle to remain compassionate. His female and male colleagues all have stories of being physically assaulted– punched, slapped, physically intimidated– and getting maliciously spit, vomited, and urinated/defecated on is a weekly occurrence. And that’s not counting the people who are just so sick the poor things can’t aim well.
He regularly sees people who do things like say they can’t stop vomiting, and then stick their fingers down their throat and vomit on the floor. And we’re not talking uncontrollable eating disorder. Drug seekers are an almost every day thing, and they yell and scream and insist they are in the worst pain ever (and, conveniently, are allergic to everything except their opiate of choice). People who come in with literally a scratch that’s not even bleeding, insisting it’s the worst pain they have ever had and they’re sure it needs stitches. Meanwhile, they have people who are genuinely critically ill who they are trying to treat well.
Unfortunately, this can mean that people who come in aren’t always taken seriously. I think especially the screamers and ones claiming intense pain unless it’s clearly from a source like a visibly injury or meets something like the clear signs of appendix or heart problems.
As others have described, compassion burnout is very real, and one really does have to mute the normal human reaction to someone in real distress because otherwise no one could do the jobs they do. But it does sometimes lead to serious lack of response and compassion. Good nurses can compartmentalize and still be caring and humane. Some nurses aren’t though, due to poor hospital management, plain old bad day, or simply being unsuited for the field.
I’m dating an ER doc who works at a pretty big county hospital, and the descriptions of her day-to-day life at work kinda terrify me. It’s basically an unrelenting parade of shit. Virtually everyone you meet is having the worst day of – at least – their week, and possibly their month, year, or even their life. She routinely sees the ugly bits of society that everyone else mostly gets to ignore, and it seems like you deal with that by building up scar tissue and seeing people less as people and more as a ambulatory collection of symptoms, because otherwise you burn out. And the problem is, I’m not even sure if there’s a way to fix it. Even if we suddenly decided that we really valued the welfare of everyone in our society and everybody got free, high-quality healthcare and we had tons of doctors and shiny awesome facilities, ERs would probably still kinda suck, and the people who work there would probably still struggle with burnout, just because it’s a super difficult job.
ETA: and yeah, the drug-seeking thing combined with societal bullshit around gender is probably the biggest cause of women who can’t seem to get their pain taken seriously. Every ER doc I know sees tons of drug seekers every week. It’s so common it doesn’t even merit mention unless it’s truly ridiculous (a guy who developed a severe limp shortly after he walked into view of the cameras and then requested a tremendous dose of morphine came up recently).
An A&E doctor I worked with suggested that we solve the A&E recruitment crisis regard A&E careers as short-term, like army careers. Train as an A&E consultant, and the expectation is that you’ll retire at 45 on a decent pension. If you want to retrain and have a second career after that, in another medical setting or out of medicine, brilliant, but if you choose to train in A&E, don’t think of it as a 40 year career.
As an idea, it definitely has its merits!
That is an excellent idea!
Not a bad idea! Though there is a certain type of type A person who really thrives on the adrenaline rush of being in a busy ED. I know some doctors like that.
Yeah, a friend who is anA&E consultant calls it medicine for people with no attention span. For him, it’s way less stressful to have a full-on shift, and to walk out at the end knowing you’ve made a real difference people a few people and altos that you won’t see many of them again. At the other end of the scale, you’ve got specialties where you see people with chronic conditions, for years on end, knowing you’ll never “cure” them but you can hopefully make them a little bit more comfortable, even if it’s only by listening and taking them seriously.
I think it’s one of the really important things to learn about yourself when you’re making medical career decisions: which kind of stress is the good, productive, buzzy kind of stress for you, and which kind is the deadening, miserable, burnout-creating stress?
“And the problem is, I’m not even sure if there’s a way to fix it.”
Yes that really worries me too. I definitely share the frustration many women have about not being taken seriously by medical professionals, but I think those of us not in the industry have to be really aware of how intensely difficult it is and how these people are often invisibly making the engine of society run in a way we don’t always appreciate. And getting frustrated with patients, while awful when it happens to you as a patient, is more understandable when you take into account the level of abuse the nurse or doctor may have suffered that day. The issue of patients feeling entitled to abuse healthcare workers is a problem and I don’t know how or if it can be fixed (I’m guessing a lot of the abusive patients may have slightly diminished responsibility due to untreated mental illness, addiction problems and similar things, which makes dealing with the issue all the harder).
I don’t think it can be completely fixed, but there are ways of mitigating it, and (once more), I think it comes back to funding, time and space. For one thing, an adequately resourced and managed healthcare service creates less frustration for patients, so the people who are in pain and upset but are otherwise rational people are less likely to reach the level of anger where they want to lash out at doctors and nurses. For the patients were some abuse and lack of cooperation are inevitable and some extent symptoms of their problems (certain mental health problems, especially addiction and substance abuse), then you accept that it’s going to happen and look at ways to support the front-line professionals and making sure they have adequate time and space to decompress and process the abuse. There is a lot of good practice around this stuff: good psychiatric services and substance abuse services deal with it all the time. Creating the space for similar conversations in specialties where it’s an issue but not one that’s been front-and-centre of the profession doesn’t *solve* it, but it can definitely help mitigate some of the consequences, I think.
Re: compartmentalizing:
I am naturally a very empathetic person, also extremely introverted. In order to prevent burnout, I have worked VERY hard to cultivate detachment and to intellectualize my job. I have to do this or I will fall apart. But … if I’m too detached, I’m missing an important part of my job!
So basically every patient encounter is this extremely deliberate, algorithmical approach on my part, where I am constantly telling myself “I don’t have to fix every problem this person has; I don’t need to heal the whole world; I can walk away from her and go home at the end of the day and Stop Worrying” but also telling myself to apply just a little more compassion, employ active listening skills, make eye contact, etc, plus all the kind-clinician stuff I talked about a few comments up.
It sounds complicated but so far I’m not burned out so… it’s working? I worked as an RN for 7+ years (still holding on to that license in case I need it!) and the abuse you will get as a nurse is literally unbelievable. Even when it’s happened to me I still can’t believe it was not all a dream. A successful compartmentalizer (CompartMentalist?) will also be able to separate a particular awful/abusive/difficult/button-pushing patient from the next patient, whom one should always presume to be innocent and kind and deserving of all love and support.
oh my god that sounds really awful! I’ve heard horror stories from A&E/ER workers before, but not in that much detail. Would you say that the case is that the majority of patients your husband and his colleagues deal with are awful, or are the awful ones a minority but so spectacularly awful they wear the staff to the bone?
Not a majority, but they can feel like it. Like when you work retail and you get 2 really shitty people in a day and it feels like all you ever do is talk to awful people. It all adds up until it’s hard to take people at face value.
Really, part of doing your job well is to NOT always take things as fave value b/c they may be masking a bigger medical problem so that’s a factor too.
My mother is an Emergency Department nurse (though in a more administrative/ less hands-on role), and I do worry about her safety sometimes. EDs are on the very top of the list for dangerous workplaces, at least in the US.
There are definitely frequent incidents there involving violence, threats, screaming at staff, etc., by patients and their relatives. They have security guards stationed there at all times, and they need them on a pretty much daily basis.
There are also a lot of people with mental health issues who can act out in a violent way. I spent a fair bit of time in the psychiatric ED with a family member this past year, and it can be quite a terrifying place at times (for both staff members and other patients).
I do admire people for doing that type of work, and it’s hardly surprising if they end up burning out. I’m actually kind of astonished that so many of my mother’s co-workers seem to maintain their level of compassion and professionalism. Not sure I could do it…
I have to shamefully admit that the last time I was in the ER I had a screaming meltdown. I was alone, had had no food, was exhausted, and after waiting an hour for check out paperwork they kept assuring me was coming (and with no medication yet administered for the broken ankle I had been walking on) I just started crying and demanding my discharge paperwork, repeating I JUST WANT TO GO HOME at increasingly loud intervals. As you can tell, I still feel bad about this because I always try to be the no problem patient.
I’d imagine a lot of people would have the same reaction to a broken ankle and no pain meds! Understandable.
They couldn’t give me anything because I had no one to drive me the hour home, which I understood (and they did give me something for overnight until the pharmacy opened) but I had run out of can. I do not like Making a Scene and Being Rude because I know they work hard and have to deal with so many people and AAAAAA guilt.
But see how, as women, we’re conditioned to feel bad about Making a Scene, even when that scene is about agonizing pain?
It’s true, I can’t deny it. Add to that (for me) the Don’t Need to Go to the Psych Hospital and the Not a Drug Seeking Psych Patient and it’s a wonder I’m not sitting there still.
Not a clinician, but I have worked in a hospital for over a decade. The overall problem is that healthcare workers, like many others, are faced with mutually contradictory mandates and often not really clear guidelines for resolving those conflicts which do contribute to and accelerate burnout. Some of the problems include:
– Big push to reduce healthcare costs, including quote-endquote unnecessary tests and procedures. Sometimes these tests and procedures also come with risks, as well, such as anything involving X-rays or general anesthetic (since a certain amount of people who go under general anesthetic never wake up, although it is much, much safer now than even as recently as 25 years ago), so generally there’s a bit of risk-benefits analysis involved.
– WRT pain specifically, it’s all about not wanting the police to stop by with a prescription bottle with your name on it that your patient was selling Oxycontins or Vicodins out of and asking you what’s the deal.
– There aren’t that many patients who are incredibly challenging and confrontational, but the ones who are tend to take up a disproportionate amount of their caregivers’ time and attention, and sometimes it’s just the randomness of their dropping in and causing a ruckus that can burn someone out.
– The other horn of the dilemma to the above is the growing role of patient satisfaction scores in hospital ratings; it leads to that damned if you do, damned if you don’t feeling.
Excellent points, especially about the potential for pain drug abuse and the randomness of challenging patients.
I genuinely believe that if we had enough doctors (and medical and supporting staff generally) and they had adequate resources and could take an appropriate amount of time to examine patients and learn about new medical initiatives (see endometriosis) then misdiagnosis rates would drop, but this isnt how the system is structured and that is the problem.
(also something like 30% of medical related expenditure in the US is tied up in bureaucracy, imagine if some of that money could be released to make actual improvements)
Re: support staff. AGH, the bane of my department’s existence (the reluctance to provide more, not the people themselves. I’m support staff, after all, haha.) We’d love to provide a few evening clinic hours, which is often requested on our oh-so-important patient rating scales, but we would need support staff to man the front desk, check people in, deal with insurance cards, etc. But the extra hours are overtime, or a different shift, and people…don’t like working late, so incentives are usually provided. That extra hour or two suddenly becomes very expensive, and a county hospital like mine can’t (or won’t) afford it, at least not on a regular basis.
Even support staff who don’t do direct patient stuff (like me) are important (I may be biased.) I take care of expense reports, research recruitment, resident coordination/onboarding/paperwork–so our providers can focus their energies on patients and teaching residents/interns. Buuut I don’t work for free.
Huuuge problem in uk healthcare at the moment, to the extent that junior doctors might go on strike about it next week.
As a health care bureaucrat, I completely agree with you.
Not that kind of doctor, nor am I any kind of clinician (though I did do a stint as a medical assistant in a women’s clinic and surprised myself by very quickly going from idealistic to very jaded and angry), but my research is on professional socialization and emotion in health professions.
As most of the comments before mine have said, it’s a structural thing. Too little time, too much work, too many mandates from the state, the insurance companies, the hospital megaliths, etc. There are tons and tons of initiatives in medical schools to train more empathetic physicians, but by and large they don’t really work the way they’re intended.
There are some changes happening as more and more women enter some of the “people-centric” specialties like pediatrics and primary care. But most of the surgical specialties are still dominated by men and have very gendered cultures about emotion and empathy.
And this is just conjecture, based on my own experience and a little culling of the literature, but it seems self-protective in a way, too. Healthcare providers are around so much pain and suffering that shutting down is a good defense against burnout.
Your research sounds so interesting! Do you have any links? specifically “professional socialization” sounds like it would be cool to read about.
I can’t seem to find anything not-dry and not in academicese about professional socialization, but the Atlantic had an awesome article about basically what I study: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/03….
The Only Human podcast had an interesting episode on the ICU recently that you might enjoy (it’s also a pretty awesome podcast about the humanity of healthcare, generally)
There are some changes happening as more and more women enter some of the “people-centric” specialties like pediatrics and primary care. But most of the surgical specialties are still dominated by men and have very gendered cultures about emotion and empathy.
Actual true thing: until two years ago, the job specifications for UK specialty training programmes all had “Empathy and Sensitivity” as a required personal attribute, except for surgical specialties.
WHOA. I mean, I shouldn’t be surprised, but whoa. Thanks for telling me that! Adding it to my research file.
In the US, medical students are evaluated on their empathetic communication as part of the national licensing exams now, but my sense based on very very anecdotal data is that specialty training overrides a lot of what they learn in medical school. The peer-pressure thing is too strong.
I was pretty disappointed when they changed it: part of my job is to run careers training for junior doctors, and mentioning that was a guaranteed laugh.
Re: the surgical specialty thing…during my short stint as a scribe in the emergency department, the attending physician I was working with asked another scribe what medical specialty he was gravitating towards (unlike me, most scribes were pre-med or in PA school or something similar. I was an actor who liked medical stuff who also typed really well, haha.) The other scribe replied, “oh, I like emergency, but I’m thinking about surgery.”
Without missing a beat, the attending replied, “But you don’t have a personality disorder!”
Actual quote from a surgical trainee I me that: “I mean, God love ’em, we need paediatric cardiology surgeons, but the type of person who can cut into a baby’s chest scores as not normal on a lot of scales.” Um. I guess yes?
It’s actually quite a tricky balance to maintain as a careers adviser: realistically, both the cultures and the actual personality traits required to do particular specialties do matter when you’re making career decisions, but it’s hard to walk the line of saying “this matters” and avoid also avoid saying “rule yourself out if you don’t fit the stereotype.”
My aunt is a gifted pediatric surgeon. People think she’s a tremendous humanitarian with untapped wells of both goodness and empathy, but really she enjoys the challenge of teeeeeeeeny tiiiiny repairs. Her staff are the empathetic ones, who play with the kids and hold the hands of parents.
Primary care physician here.
I cannot attempt to give a full answer to this; it’s really complicated and I can only speak from my experience. I will say all the comments are right on. There are problems with patients, with providers, and with the system.
Regarding “We’ll treat you when you stop screaming” I have definitely said a variation of that to a couple of people, but only when they were writhing around and putting our staff in danger of a needlestick or a kick in the face, or needlessly upsetting other patients.
On the other hand, I have patients that are utterly ignored by providers. I often give my patients verbal instructions for how to get through to specialists, and lately I have started giving some people written scripts to take with them to the specialists. This seems to be highly effective. E.g., “How would you feel if you had to spend eight hours a day on your feet at work with your uterus hanging out?” or “I refuse to leave your office until you have given me a plan of action other than ‘go the ER if it happens again’. I am here to get definitive treatment for this problem.” Sometimes I tell people, “Start the conversation with ‘I do not want a prescription for pain medicine.'” That goes a long way.
I’m glad this problem is getting more attention. One of the most important lessons I learned in residency is that a person can be hysterical/mentally ill/hateful/faking symptoms and STILL HAVE CANCER.
Those are REALLY good scripts
“How would you feel if you had to spend eight hours a day on your feet at work with your uterus hanging out?”
Good lord O_O
Do you have a blog or something? I am terrified of doctors and trying to get somebody to take my severe premenstrual pain seriously. It’s *bad*. How do you go in to see a new doctor and just establish that you’re not hysterical and you’ve got a resume of dealing with very painful things so you’re definitely not exaggerating?
You could recruit a fellow Toastie to go with you and give the doctor the what-for! We would enjoy it. I totally volunteer if you live near me.
I’d like to think that eye contact and saying calmly, “I’m concerned that a serious medical issue is being dismissed because my most immediate symptom is pain” would work, or saying that the amount of pain medication (OTC or otherwise) it is taking to manage your pain is more than you think is healthy in the long term (that’s what worked for me: “Hey doc, I’m allergic to NSAIDs so I either take three shots of vodka or get prescribed opiates for my problems so maybe we should find something else?” but she had known me since my childhood so that was a lot of it.)
Anyway – long-distance hugs and good thoughts and wishes for luck to you!
Agree with walrathem’s suggestions, especially about taking a friend with you. Some other suggestions:
1. Ask people you know for a gyn recommendation.
2.if they can’t help you, join a mom’s group on social media, like Meetup or Yahoo groups or Facebook. You don’t really have to be a mom; people talk about gyns all the time. They ask for recs for gyns for issues other than pregnancy. Even if you just lurk you will likely get some idea of who the compassionate MDs in your area are.
3. Research premenstrual pain a little and go to the appointment with a list of possibilities. This shows the doctor you are not just there for pain meds. For example, “Do you think I could have endometriosis? Would I benefit from birth control pills? Do you think it would help if I saw a specialist?”
4. actually do what the doctor says. So many people go to the doctor, and the doctor says take ibuprofen and get more exercise and try an antidepressant. And then the patient feels like the doctor is blowing them off but actually the doctor is giving them excellent scientific advice.
5.try to schedule your first appointment when you feel good and a later one when you feel bad.
Good luck finding someone who can help you. Take heart-lots of women chose to become gynecologists because they wanted to help women.
For your point number 4 there, that’s why primary care needs more psychologists. We need to figure out how to explain things in a way that makes people understand the meaning of why this is happening and why the advice would work, and then we need to help them act. I’ve taken classes on this, and I’m taking another this spring where I’ll get to work together with med students. Making a behavioural change is really difficult, and lots of people (including doctors, physiotherapists, nurses etc) who aren’t trained in psychology underestimate the problem.
You are a good doctor. Thank you. You seem reliable.
Quasi-medical person here (I worked in a blood bank). My contact with patients was indirect, but you still had to do some mental distancing, and I get the impression from my actual medical family members it’s the same. For your own mental health, you have to kind of forget patients are people, or you can be overwhelmed with suffering. The hard part is doing that and still being compassionate. I don’t think many people really can, which leads to this.
Okay so I’m probably so late that no one reads this thread anymore, but I want to add a few things.
1. Doctors are just as susceptible to cognitive biases as everybody else, and there are several biases that are at play here. I bet that the fundamental attribution error is a HUGE cause of trouble. The fundamental attribution error is when you believe that other’s actions are because of who they are, while your own actions and the actions of people similar to you are responses to the specific situation. This is the cause of the Just-World fallacy, victim blaming and other fun stuff.
We are more prone to making this error when we’re stressed, when we’re from an individualistic culture, when the other person is very different from us (especially if we perceive them as deviant), and when they’re doing something negative. Funnily enough, we still do it even if we actually DO know the circumstances impacting the person. There’s a famous study where people read statements by authors who had been paid to argue their position (pro Fidel Castro), but even when they knew that, they still believed that they could infere the authors’ real opinions.
2. There’s a really common misconception that healthcare workers need to be less empathic to do their jobs, or even to “survive”. The beliefs sound something like:
– empathy means that you have to experience somebody else’s pain
– sensing that other people are in pain is harmful to you and will make you burn out
– having an emotion will cause you to be less good at your job, because emotions and skills are opposites
– you will stop feeling an emotion if you push it away and tell yourself not to feel it or override it by being sneery
These beliefs are wrong – feeling others’ pain is NOT the only way to have empathy, and healthy compassion actually protects from burnout, while cynicism is a risk factor. You don’t have to push away your natural empathy, and pushing an emotion away doesn’t make it go away, it just consumes mental bandwidth (which could actually make you worse at your job). You do need to not be emotionally overwhelmed, but that’s different! Emotional stress (like feeling threatened and overwhelmed) is bad for you, but regular emotions aren’t. And feelings of compassion and altruism are actually good for you. They make you less stressed and more able to act to help others.
3. Honestly, the history of institutional medicine is not that great. There are many bad doctors you can learn bad attitudes from. There are good doctors too of course, but if you really believe that empathy is dangerous, you’ll be looking for a way to “protect” yourself, and you may find it in elitism, cynicism, apathy or Just-World fallacies. You may also learn lots of Tru Fax about patients and their manipulative ways. It’s like the police and rape stereotypes.
So… now picture a crowded ER with a stressed-out doctor, who rose to a great job in an individualistic culture. S/he spends their days and nights meeting loads of people who seem very different from themself (doctors are way above average in wealth, status, health etc) doing very annoying things (showing negative emotions, yelling, wanting help). Committing the fundamental attribution error, the doctor may automatically assume that someone who behaves like they’re in distress is acting out their personality – they’re a negative, complainy person, even if they have legit reasons to be in pain. The doctor has listened to common wisdom and now believes that empathy is dangerous and/or that many patients are faking, exaggerating or not actually suffering.
A good person with that mentality might think “okay, this complainer just needs someone to be there for them, I guess I’ll listen if it makes them feel better”. But a less awesome person might go all the way to “oh come on, she’s not in REAL pain, she just wants to drain my time and attention for no reason at all” and start acting like the patient is an enemy – a gross, dangerous, treacherous vampire.
This has probably been asked before, but what kind of dog is Sansa? She looks like a stuffed animal come to life.
She is a deliberately-mixed breed engineered by a secret genius to become a 110 lb giant who will live an especially long and healthy life. Nicole hasn’t chosen to name the breeder.
The Captain America of dogs
It must be the same genius who engineered our friend’s dog. He’s half husky, quarter saluki, quarter dachshund. No one is quite sure how the dachshund got in there. (He looks like a sort of tabby husky. He’s very bouncy, though now he’s a bit older he’s stopped knocking me over with his greetings, and given to cheerfully sucking himself off when curled up on the floor in the pub.) The two theories are:
A) He ate a dachshund just before the DNA test.
B) The dachshund is inside, in a little control box, pulling levers. While drunk.
B) The dachshund is inside, in a little control box, pulling levers. While drunk.
If this isn’t true, it should be.
Direwolf.
Nicole, I hope you know that ever since a bff sent it to me the day you wrote it, “End This Terrible Relationship You’re In, Please” has been part of my personal canon which, yes, entails re-reading several times a year.
I’m so glad to hear that!! Thank you for telling me.
Obviously it’s not in any way comparable to cancer, but my accidental conception of 2 out of my 3 pregnancies was both times the result of bad advice from gynecologists severely ignorant about PCOS, which affects 15% of women. If this fairly basic disorder was beyond the imagination of doctors who specialize in women’s health, I can’t even imagine what else is missed or undiagnosed in women. Beyond enraging.
Not as severe as cancer, either, but in college I went to the doc one time because I was certain I had pneumonia. I’d had it before, I knew how it manifested in my body, I was certain it was pneumonia. The doc took one look at me, saw some dumb college chick, and tried to tell me to just go home and take some tylenol cold. The ONLY reason I finally got diagnosed was because my Dad had driven me to the doc (I was home that week) and he did his Very Serious Man voice and the doc was like “fine, I’ll do a chest x-ray to shut you up.” Guess what? It was fucking pneumonia. And you can bet that the doc was super quick to invent some bullshit song-and-dance as to why he hadn’t realized this/taken me seriously. “Oh, I’ve NEVER seen it look like this…SO unusual.” Yeah, fuck you, buddy. I know my own body and I know a line of bullshit when I hear it.
Actual conversation with my mom yesterday about the series of texts I sent her about our building flooding:
Me: So yeah, a pipe burst on the second and fourth floor so the building was starting to flood and I had to get an Uber home because the shuttles were taking so long
Mom: I was way more worried about your data being safe than you. I thought you were going to have to start all over
mom, it’s MY job to worry about the data.
it’s YOUR job to worry about me (worrying about the data).
Aw, your mom cares about what you care about!
“… they are a radiator and not a drain…”
Ooof this is the perfect phrase for relationships and I will keep it close to my heart forever more.
My friend came up with a different portmanteau, “Januwagon”, which I actually prefer, but it hasn’t caught on. Drynuary forever, I guess.
I think Drynuary (like another one I encountered today, Bratabase, a database for bras) fails all the rules for portmanteaus set out by Gretchen McCulloch. The stress is all wrong. 🙁
THANK YOU IT DOESN’T MAKE ANY GODDAMN SENSE
Thought I was taking crazy pills over here.
Gah! That is so much better. Not doing it this year, but filing this away for the next time I do…
Sounds like Durham, N.C. needs one of these for that low bridge:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2325904/W…
We all already know that history (and by history, I mean other white people)
Boom.
(This is marvellous because it makes explicit the thing that always bugs me about things like “but everyone was racist back then!” No, actually, there were very many people of colour who did not take it for granted that they were not worthy of the same level of respect and dignity as white people. When you say, “everyone”, you mean “white people”, so shut up.)
my coworker used to live across the street from that bridge!
Also, did anyone else get Pete Seeger doing the song about the Eerie Canal stuck in their head after reading the article?
(“low bridge, everybody down, low bridge ’cause we’re coming to the town. and you’ll always know your neighbor, you’ll always know your pal, if you’ve ever navigated on the Eerie Canal”)
why would you do that to meeeeeee as someone who grew up not far from the canal I know all the words and will now have it playing on a loop for the rest of the day!
I mean this absolutely sincerely: I love the idea of it being about the Eerie Canal and not the Erie Canal. Especially since my introduction to the song was the cover by Bruce Springsteen & the Seeger Sessions Band, which has a smidge of a sinister edge to it. (I didn’t grow up in NY, so it was very startling when, at a concert in upstate NY, they started in on this and EVERYONE started singing along.)
hahaha oops! I didn’t even notice that I had spelled it wrong until I saw your comment.
and yeah, that springsteen cover is a little eerie. can imagine the “you’ll always know your neigbor and you’ll always know your pal” bit in Chris Kimball’s voice now…
definite departure from the sing-along tapes I listened to in the car as a kid.
Am I the only one who had to learn that song to sing in a fifth-grade play about ~America~?
(I did not grow up in New York))
(also until right this moment I thought it was like…you know…a folk ballad from the 1800s)
Man, I needed that article about ending relationships. It’s not even a terrible relationship, or even that bad, but our 2 years is in Feb I’m not feeling like it’s worth it anymore and I’m not getting what I need. We should just be cut loose from each other :/
Good luck. You’ll be great.
Toasties! This seems like it will by up your ally: http://gizmodo.com/young-people-used-these-absurd…
Aw yeah girl, my lamp turns all the way down, if you know what I mean.
brb headed to Squeezemburg
Gonna use that line on Mr Thuja tonight!
When I read that first card I (for some reason) assumed the owner was a woman, who was coyly asking her latest paramour over for a fun time.
Then the article said only men used these, and the whole thing ended up feeling disappointly tawdry.
It is nearly 7:30 am in Oregon, and I was supposed to have clocked out of work over an hour ago, but my replacement finally called and said “oh, my alarm didn’t go off, I’m on my way.” On the upside I know I’m not just, like, stranded here forever, trying to be upbeat to residents, when I just want to go home and eat and crawl into bed. On the other hand I still have to be upbeat to residents until she gets here.
Also it’s very weird to see the link roundup with so few comments. By the time I dig in it’s usually a few hundred and I’m the only one scattering comments everywhere!
I’m so hungry and tired and my face is really greasy and ugggggh. I have a little monitor that tells me whenever someone opens a door with a fob (all the locks are electronic) and I keep staring at it looking for my coworker’s name.
EDIT: There she is! Thank fuck.
Yay!
OF COURSE the comments on the bridge piece involve someone who brings the whole thing back to Obama.
Wait, Obama’s responsible for this totally awesome, strangely satisfying, male-ego-trapping bridge?
THANKS OBAMA
Drynuary still sounds like a vaginal problem.
I didn’t know that Jennifer Westfeldt and Jon Hamm broke up and now I’m not sure I can do anything else with my day. I am already a hormonal, self-defeating mess right now and I didn’t need that.
UGH, IS THERE NOTHING GOOD LEFT ANYWHERE.
If it’s any consolation, I know with a deep certainty that Jennifer will be Just Fine, no matter what. (Not based on knowing her, just my witchy Feminine Intuition)
Yeah, and honestly, wasn’t Jon Hamm totally sleeping around on her constantly anyways? Weren’t there always those rumors? Isn’t she better off without that kind of BS?
Ugh. Theres nothing good in this life.
Jon Hamm SET SOMEONE ON FIRE. So no one deserves that in a partner.
I agreed to make a couple of felt dolls for a girlfriend of mine and the felt just arrived at my desk at work and all I want to do is go home, cut into this beautiful wool blend felt and sew while watching my latest Korean drama.
Some days, going to work (even my job which I love) is bullshit.
Coming in just to say that Mallory showed the wisdom of Solomon on the “Dear Prudie” question re: pregnancy of mentally disabled daughter. So many different aspects to consider in that situation. I don’t think there could be any better answer, anywhere.
It’s easier to comment here than on Slate’s ad-polluted mobile site, so here I am. (I have the Toast whitelisted in AdBlock.)
That question broke my heart. No good solutions. Just pain.
My best friend is doing Drynuary and has pleaded with me to join her, but seeing as how I received a lovely bottle of rye for Christmas, it’s seeming very unlikely. I send her supportive texts everyday, though–is there some portmanteau for that?
Would like it if you took a new pic of Sansa next to the same cabinet and water dish for proper growth comparison. The kangaroo pic has no context in it. 🙂 If you have time!
Well, assuming that original Sansa pic is in the same room with the same tile, younger Sansa is at least half the size of current sansa, even with stretching.
So, Nicole has approximately 100% more dog than she did a few weeks ago.
This is more fodder for OT than for LR, but . . . I just ate the most amazing sandwich of my life. There’s a deli near me that makes the Platonic ideal of the veggie sub. It’s a salad made with the most ripe tomatoes and freshest onions, spinach, carrots, lettuce, peppers (regular & sweet), cabbage, and provolone cheese on a hoagie roll. I have never felt so fulfilled by a sandwich. I could die happy right now.
What’s the best sandwich you’ve ever had?
What if I hit peak sandwich? And no other sandwich measures up?
This doesn’t even sound that exciting, but it’s a turkey and brie sandwich from the restaurant down the street from my house:
Smoked turkey breast, brie cheese, apple, mixed greens, smoked paprika aioli, grilled multigrain bread
Something about the creamy/tart/smoky combo.
I don’t know if this counts, but right now I’m jonesing for a burger from Lola in downtown Cleveland (with pickles and a perfect fried egg on top).
Unfortunately, I live 250+ miles away now. 🙁
I’ve been sitting here trying to think up the best sandwich I’ve ever had, and I think I may love sandwiches too much. I can’t pick! Homemade: I’m a big fan of pumpernickel bread, mashed avocado, spicy mustard, and turkey.
But a good Cuban sandwich on fresh Cuban bread is hard to beat, dang.
OH AND my ideal Publix sub: multigrain bread, turkey, mayo, pickles, lettuce, banana peppers. It’s not fancy but its the perfect tangy sandwich.
I can’t pick one sandwich. It’s too hard.
Have you ever had a jibarito? It’s a Cuban sandwich with flattened fried plantains instead of bread. It’s a wonderful thing.
I have not! But I need to because I love fried plantains as well.
Ham and beurre on a baguette. First meal on my first trip to France, aged 16, having traveled for 24 hours with minimal sleep. I was so delirious, I would blink and fall asleep and almost fall over, and then this was fed to me, and it was manna.
I also just made smitten kitchen’s grilled cheese with caramelized onion last night, and it was pretty good too, but it was no ham and beurre.
I have been waiting for years for someone to ask this question. As a veg-eater: a Capresewich from Cheebo in LA. Tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, obviously, but also ripe avocado, burrata, and olive tapenade.
Prosciutto and butter on a baguette from Rubi’s in Great Barrington. With a little bit of salt. Four ingredients, pure delicious. Although the purpose of the trip was to pick up my aunt’s new puppy from the breeder so I might only be considering it the Greatest Sandwich Ever because I was already operating at maximum squee.
I had a dermatologist tell me an obvious skin cancer was “probably just a pimple you can’t stop scratching.” Then he told me about how we could clear up the acne on my forehead and make me so much prettier. When I told him no thanks, I have plenty of self-esteem already, he said (and I quote), “You’re a tough sell.”
I take that as a compliment.
And I got a second opinion, surgery, and got rid of the damn cancer.
To clarify, it was not at all obvious to me at the time that it was cancer, but I knew that something was really wrong.
And I am eternally grateful to the second doctor who was compassionate and concerned and good at his job.
Ugh, same thing. Condescending primary doc told me basal cell carcinoma near my eye was just a cholestorol deposit, only deigned to send me to a dermatologist a year later. And because it was so close to the eye it wound up needing a complicated plastic surgery intervention, which maybe it wouldn’t if it had been treated a year earlier.
Glad you got it, though. I had to have some facial reconstruction after carcinoma #2, and it definitely confirmed that I am never never never doing plastic surgery for cosmetic reasons. Ouch.
Yeah, with you there! Knives and lasers near my face… nope nope.
How do you Drynuary when NFL is still happening? My mind boggles.
I’ve given up alcohol for Lent in the past. That 40 days is brutal, but I save soooooo much money it’s kind of amazing.
Oh, yeah, plus the health benefits yada yada yada.
I am mostly doing Drynuary to save money post-holidays, actually. I don’t care about my health 🙂 And January’s the best time for me to do it, as Lent includes Fish Fry Fridays and St. Patrick’s Day.
This is the first year I haven’t done a Drynuary since .. 2012? Mainly because I’m moving across the country in a week and there are so many wonderful local breweries to visit with friends before I go. I’ll do a FebruDry and possibly go vegan for February just so I have a project to focus on while I get organized in a new state.
Late to comment on this, but I didn’t know that the radiator/drain article on the Hairpin was by Nicole!!! That article was actually SUPER important to me a few years ago when I was making the decision to permanently end a relationship that had turned super toxic and move to California.
While I would have probably moved on no matter what, “radiator or drain?” became such a, like, battle cry for me in those months and man. MAAAAAN. SO. IMPORTANT. Thank you Nicole, seriously.
It makes me so happy to think that my bestie’s beloved grandmother and her wonderful turns of phrase live on in our hearts. I mean this in all sincerity and with great joy.
Argh. Today’s stressful. Partially cause of problems that were someone else’s fault, and then extra so because I realized I had fucked up and caused problems with that same person. Don’t you hate it when you’re righteously bothered by something and then oops – realize you’re the asshole too.
I mean I know it’s half figure-of-speech and I don’t want to be overly mean about it but the number of “I can’t X sober” posts surrounding not drinking for a month is seriously worrying.
There is a famously narrow and steep street in Wellington (NZ) and on MORE THAN ONE OCCASION a bus has become stuck on the hairpin bend halfway up the road. You wouldn’t think it would happen more than once but Devon Street has a magnetic pull on buses.
Which is my theory for this bridge too. It’s a truck magnet
TOASTS I have to post this comment on an article about people who do the “only reading women in 2015” because LOLOLOL
“THANK YOU. Disclaimer, I am a white male…” blah blah blah sjws blah blah blah.
The doctor who missed my mother’s lung cancer handed me a prescription for twice as much as I needed for her lethal dose, in her no-assisted-suicide state, on the pretense of a fairly minor orthopedic issue. Like instead of saying, “Here’s four percocet, when they’re gone four Advil should work,” he gave me 150 dilaudid.
For future reference: If your sodium levels suddenly drop, you screen for lung cancer. But if it’s small cell lung cancer, it will not show on an x-ray. You need an MRI, to find small cell before you get an actual lump on your rib cage, by which time you will have eight months to live, even with one round of chemo.
I’m so so sorry. That is awful.
You'll never know if you don't try 😉
I'm actually really into Cracked for this reason though, its the kind of thing people who wouldn't normally think about these things might actually read! Everyone can relate to dick cancer!
I don't have any experience with Endo, but I did read that doctors tend to tell young women who present with the symptoms that they're too young to have endo because it usually doesn't present until mid 20s-30s.
HOWEVER, what's actually going on is that most women aren't diagnosed until their mid-20s-30s, but they've been suffering since puberty. It just takes that long to get doctors to believe the symptoms are real.
FUCKING RAGE.
Wasn't the first one posted in the Link Roundup awhile ago? I remember because it infuriated me that a man had to write it for people to take it seriously; and he's playing the 'omg I now believe sexism is real because I witnessed it one time' but his wife has probably been telling him about this shit for years and how badly she was treated by doctors. If his wife had written that article (like hundreds of women already have) everyone would have just said she was complaining and the doctors were following procedure or some bullshit.
From what I've read; one of the current issues with the 4 hour target is that there isn't much triaging of paitents, its just a blanket target; so you have the person who decided to go to A&E with the cold they've had for a week because it was easier than getting a GP appointment* and the person with stabbing abdominal pain who in theory both have to been seen within 4 hours and both have to have a full work up 'just in case' (they sue); whereas any intelligent person would stick a nurse in the waiting room who could fast track the stabbing abdominal pain to a doctor and give cold guy a tissue and tell him to fuck off home.
*I really really really hate the 'customer service' model the NHS is moving toward and GPs are so over stretched without the necessary resources that I can understand why people think that going to A&E is a valid alternative to waiting a few days for an appointment (EVEN THOUGH IT IS NOT.), but there should be someone in the A&E with the authority to send the idiots home so that Emergency Doctors can focus on actual Emergencies. See also community care for elderly and disabled patients, they end up in A&E because the care they actually need has been completely stripped and there is no alternative.
Grrr Tories and their deliberate defunding of the NHS so that they can justify privatization ('It clearly doesn't work, because we've run it badly on purpose, so we better sell it to the company that our school friends run now.'). The NHS is amazing and wonderful and it should be given all the money and all the respect.